


Points For Trying

by factorielle



Series: Down The Line [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-28
Updated: 2005-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 22:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/factorielle/pseuds/factorielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even at the end of the Pirate Wars, Smoker's troubles are far from over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Points For Trying

"Strawberries," Nami said, doing her best to keep her face straight. "And sardines. Oh, and white chocolate."

It was the bargain of a lifetime. A lie so deliberately blatant that even Chopper wouldn't have believed it for one second, a terrible cliché, and she hadn't even entered the craving phase of her pregnancy yet.

If she won this one, she wouldn't need to watch her back for weeks. If she failed, she'd never catch up. She looked at him closely, holding the quill in her hand tightly.

A muscle twitching under his left eye, his hand reached for one of the numerous cigars strapped to his vest. She raised a meaningful eyebrow, her eyes barely flickering to the huge _No Smoking_ sign that had been hung in her office a month before.

The twitching increased, but his hand fell back down. _Hah._ Those fifty points were hers whatever happened. Good, but not good enough. She held his glare. Time was on her side. The longer he didn't react-

_Yes_. Fists tightly close at his sides, he looked away and stormed off, slamming the door behind him. Without throwing a fit or telling her to fuck herself, which more or less meant she'd won.

"Three hundred and forty points," she heard from the door that led straight to her bedroom, and was conveniently hidden from the main entrance by a large cupboard. "Hina impressed." Nami let the quill go and smiled. _Victory is sweet._

"I'd give it four hundreds," came unexpectedly from the window. Both women started and turned around, only to see a bright flame take human shape. A few seconds later, Fire-Fist Ace was sitting on the windowsill. Hina predictably dashed at him, but she wasn't near fast enough, and the iron lock closed uselessly around a live flame.

"Hina failed," the admiral said, and Ace took his flesh form again, right next to the iron ring, before leaping gracefully from the window. He nodded almost professionally at Hina. That was how it went, each time. It was one of those little arrangements that had been slowly constructed and worked for everyone. Ace visited every now and then, and the high-ranked Marines who'd had to deal with him knew fully well that a whole base wouldn't be enough to capture him, so why bother ringing the alarm? Plus he never directly challenged the World Government, so his capture wasn't a priority.

Which didn't mean one shouldn't try, of course, because he was still a pirate, and it was quite possible that he had, ah, some valuable information on his brother's whereabouts. Smoker, in the name of Justice or something, _did_ try, each time. For at least three and a half seconds. So did Hina. Nami and Tashigi, not being Devil Fruit users, generally abstained. Everyone else on the base who caught sight of him really tried, and were lucky when they escaped with minor burns. But telling the whole garrison that Fire-Fist Ace had his own special laissez-passer into the place, for reasons that they most likely didn't want to hear about, well... while Hina was the most powerful woman in the history of the Marines, it didn't mean she could officially erase the invisible demarcation between Marines and pirates. And if the one person in all the world who ranked higher than she did got wind of the little game she was playing on a permanent basis with Whitebeard's second, that would probably be only the first of a long, long series of courts-martial.

Though come to think of it, it would probably be even more disastrous if _Smoker_ found out.

Theirs was the kind of arrangement that would make anyone with half a conscience cringe, and while Nami, Hina and Smoker were perfectly fine with it, Tashigi sometimes had flashes of shameful guilt. But Ace never had any trouble melting her reservations, because he was so _charming_, so wild yet always polite and proper. Then there was the fact that his relationship to this particular branch of the Marines ran significantly deeper than Nami had suspected before she'd enrolled. The long-suffering look on Tashigi's face when she'd told her had amused Nami more than anything; she'd had to deal with something similar as a Straw Hat, and she liked Ace anyway.

But then she'd fallen pregnant, and it was an open secret in the base that Smoker was the father, although the fastest-spreading rumor was that they'd both been dead drunk at the time. She'd expected Ace to resent her for it, because he was one of those select few people who knew that getting drunk just didn't happen to her, and if she didn't even have that flimsy excuse for having deliberately walked on his territory, what _did_ she have? She'd expected him to ask questions, if nothing else. To want to know when, how, why, how many times. To pick at it.

Instead of that, he'd just been... Ace. Smooth and unpredictable. The two of them were secretive enough that despite all her prodding she knew no detail about the dynamics between them, before or after. Neither of them had mentioned anything to her, or Tashigi, but things seemed to have worked out and Ace was madly in love with the unborn child, never missing an opportunity to put an ear on her tummy and listen for sounds that wouldn't come for weeks. He always checked up on her first when he visited (which seemed to be much more often as of late) and treated her like a frail princess. Which was generally more annoying than anything else and eerily reminded her of Sanji-_kun_, but she couldn't bring herself to deny him anything when she looked at his eyes, that filled with wonder every time he looked at her.

Great men of the high seas, she reminded herself. Not that many women, even less babies. Fatherly instincts had to be taken _some_where. Maybe someone should introduce him to Usopp's family, she thought sometimes. Kaya was perfect in everything, but the kids, gods, the kids were definitely not anything any properly wired person would make sparkly eyes at.

Not that Ace was properly wired. Scratch that plan.

Tashigi burst in as Ace was kneeling between Nami's spread legs, but she barely seemed to notice.

"Uhm, I just saw Smoker-_san_ walking past and he-" she took in exactly who was in the room, and got it. Tashigi had way too much respect for Smoker to play the game with the three of them, but she wasn't blind to it.

"Was he really mad?" Ace asked, his amusement clear as water as he got up and patted Nami's swollen belly gently.

"Three cigars," Tashigi said, nodding emphatically. "What happened?" She didn't play, but she didn't mind knowing the score, which Nami had always considered somewhat devious of her. She smirked. "I sent him shopping," she said. "Which is worth... how much do you think?"

Hina and Ace looked at each other and seemed to come to a silent agreement. "Three hundred and eighty," Ace said. "Which puts you in the lead, and means I have to leave you, ladies, if I don't want to be in last place again this month." Getting under Smoker's skin when he'd just been taken to the verge of blowing up the whole island was indeed worth a lot, but Nami suspected it wasn't the man's main reason to be looking for the general.

He bowed to each of them at the perfect angle, and left through the open door. Nami hoped no-one would spot him. It made things so terribly disorganized when he was too careless to be stealthy. Hina took her leave as well, heading back to the large quarters she'd managed to get from the Commanding Officer for her visit. That one had earned her a hundred points at the time, plus twenty every time she carelessly dropped that she might be staying one more week after all, and Nami had thought that it would be impossible to catch up.

But pregnancy was _such _an asset in the game. No matter how obviously she abused the situation and the words 'take responsibility for your actions', Smoker did as he was told. That was men and their honor, she reflected. They never knew when to surrender.

"Smoker-_san _will find out eventually," Tashigi was saying, sitting on the chair opposite Nami. "And he won't be happy about it."

The redhead dismissed the cassandraic warning with a wave, sighing as she turned her attention back to the map she'd been correcting before she'd had the brilliant idea of sending General Smoker shopping for strawberries. She wasn't even sure if it was supposed to represent Red Line or Little Garden or what. Gods, she couldn't wait until she was allowed on the high seas again. Map-drawing didn't gather that many hopeful talents, and the newest recruits in her division plainly sucked.

"He won't," she answered, smearing a big red cross over the sheet of paper. "He decided twenty years ago that the world was out to annoy him whatever he did. We can get away with anything. And you like it too," she pointed out. She didn't need to look up to know that Tashigi was blushing brightly, but they both knew Nami would push the teasing no further.

Because of course, the whole base knew that Tashigi had a small crush on her commanding officer, and as so many things everyone knew, it was wrong. Nami, on the other hand, had strong suspicions as to who exactly her friend saw sometimes when she heard the low, grumbling voice or looked at short hair and an exposed, muscled chest.

She was the same, after all. And somehow Tashigi seemed to have noticed that Nami didn't mind the smell of smoke _quite_ as much as she would have people believe. So while it was still a mystery to everyone how the state 'sleep with any pretty girl who offers' came before 'pass out until next morning' on Smoker's drunkenness scale, there was at least one person who knew why Nami _had_ offered, exactly when he was at this stage. The baby had been unforeseen, but as opposed to most of the men in her life Smoker was not completely insane, which more or less made him a better potential father. All in all, it worked out, and she hadn't even been burned to a crisp, which was a considerable bonus.

"Ah, before I forget. There have been sightings of a small dial-powered ship not far from here," Tashigi said after a long stretch of comfortable silence. Nami raised her head. "Luffy?"

Rethorical question. The self-navigating masterpiece that Nami and Usopp had taken five years to create was unique, and no-one else but Luffy would be mad enough to travel on a ship that ran on Impact and Reject dials anyway. If he was in the Loguetown area, then he was either going back to Grand Line or simply coming to get his ship upgraded. Which was not happening anytime soon, considering the quality of the maps she was being sent these days. Oh well, at least she had enough data on East Blue and Grand Line to allow him to travel these seas alone without heading straight into a bunch of reefs, and the detection system that Usopp had developed was good enough that minor changes could be overlooked. As long as her idiot captain stayed on the paths she'd mapped and remembered not to eat all his food on the very first day, no harm would come to him.

Which didn't mean she wouldn't appreciate a visit. It had been too long since he'd last come here, and the selection process had been slowed down.

In these rather calm times, a lot of people wanted to become Marines. The age or piracy was not quite over, but the existance of an uncatchable and charismatic Pirate King had made seas a lot safer. It meant that selecting men for promotion was not an easy thing, but it had to be done because a lot of high-ranked officers had retired these past years, and the domino effect being what it was, it was up to Captain Tashigi, among others, to choose who was fit for command - as opposed to scrubbing the kitchen floors.

An unexpected but rather good method of selection had presented itself the first time Luffy came to visit. Usually, people who enrolled saw the world in black and white, and had to be taught that there were a lot of people for whom those tags, or any at all really, didn't work. The sight of the Pirate King confidently strolling inside a Marine base was generally a good way to test how they warmed up to the idea. And since Luffy's chosen method of greeting his old friends generally consisted in a Gomu Gomu no GLOMP (an interesting variation of the Rocket attack)... well, an attentive officer soon found out who had the fastest legs, the quickest weapons, and the weakest bladders.

Yes, Luffy coming here was a good thing. Kept the garrison on their toes, things like that.

Plus, she'd probably be able to pawn the sardines off to him.


End file.
